The maze book for programmers!
mazesforprogrammers.com

Algorithms, circle mazes, hex grids, masking, weaving, braiding, 3D and 4D grids, spheres, and more!

DRM-Free Ebook

The Buckblog

assorted ramblings by Jamis Buck

RubyConf 2005

17 October 2005 — 2-minute read

What an incredible weekend.

I just got back from RubyConf 2005 last night. Late. I would have blogged about it as it was occurring but I was spending every spare minute I had hacking on Rails, gearing up for the release of 1.0 RC1.

So, now that I have a minute, I figured I’d sit and write about some of my impressions.

It was definitely unforgettable. Almost 200 Rubyists packed into a conference room, Mac laptops everywhere (are you PC folks feeling any pressure to change, yet?) and ideas and code flying fast and furious. I finally got to meet most of the Rails core team face-to-face, which was a real treat. I am honored to be a part of that group.

Late nights, hacking. Every night. Combine that with early mornings (to get a decent seat) and you wind up with a real recipe for sleep deprivation.

I loved listening to Matz talk about Ruby, although it was unfortunate that so many people turned his keynote into a “why can’t you just…” session. Still, I was very impressed with how he handled that, listening to people and responding politely.

Probably the most life-changing thing that occurred at the conference was that I decided to give TextMate another try. It has certainly progressed quite a bit since I last tried it, and although I do miss the implementation of some of vim’s features (like joining the next line with the current—TextMate does it, too, but not as cleanly) I think I could grow to love TextMate. The hard part now is learning how to be effective in this new editor. Having used a mode-based editor for so long, it’s difficult to remember how to use anything else!

Reader Comments

Thanks for the update- love to hear more. Always good to hear about Rails progress, also. The grammar geek in me requires me to express my outrage at your inappropriate use of apostrophes. "Mac laptop's everywhere"-- this "apostrophe as plural" is spreading everywhere. It must be stopped on all fronts!
Thanks for pointing out the typo, Matt. Did I mention sleep deprivation? :)
_are you PC folks feeling any pressure to change, yet?_ Would if I were running Windows. =D I was actually pretty surprised to see how many Windows laptops were there. I thought the light of Unix was more blinding and all-encompassing.
I never really had much trouble switching to TextMate simply because when it comes to text editors, I don't do anything fancy. I like having the option to, but I just never make use of it. The fanciest feature I use in TextMate is the two-space tabs that are really actually two spaces. And yeah, other than that, I just type. Given that, unsurprisingly, my previous editor of choice was emacs.
I agree with you 100%. Hardcore vim guy, I own Textmate, but it's hard to get used to. One of my buddies who was a hardcore vim guy now uses Emacs with vyper mode.
I'm hooked with Vim, can't use anything else.
Thanks for the tip on Textmate. I just downloaded it and it seems rather nice. I'm a vim buff myself. Old school UNIX user who converted to Mac when I saw there was finally UNIX with commercial apps and a nice GUI. I'm used to either vim or SubEthaEdit which is very nice too by the way. I will definitely try Textmate!
are you PC folks feeling any pressure to change, yet? http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/general/apple_sux.html
I've been trying to post a message on your entry entitled, "The Sad State of Mac Genealogy Software," but it simply will not accept anything. It's been several days since I last tried, but the post is still not there. I have tried posting with both Safari 2.0.1 and Firefox 1.5, Beta 2, on OS X 10.4.2. I would post the message here or on your next entry, but it would be a little out of context, unless you don't mind. Any ideas?